National Poetry Day 2017 - Freedom

National Poetry Day 2017: Freedom

Freedom's the theme for Thursday 28 September - National Poetry Day organised by the Forward Arts Foundation. It's been running since 1994, coincidentally the year of the first free South African elections. In the new collection I'm finalising, freedom's often about time. I've been writing about ageing. It goes without saying, getting older focuses the mind.

Pocket St Anthony

I am now unable to ease a splinter

from my thumb or read the small print

of terms and conditions. Join a flock of sheep,

people say, or post a prayer to St Anthony

down the back of the sofa. Lost time

and stolen time are gathering behind me

darkening the sky. They will come back

as hail, rain, snow, keeping me inside

to watch the breaking sky and scatter me.

(first published in Warwick Review)

But is freedom also about constraints? The tiny poem below is from the same sequence, 'In the Library of Dust', as Pocket St Anthony.

Copper bracelet

The shackle, then, is a survivor.

With the crucifix

it outlasts almost everything.

This poem explores literal constraints but reminds me of the widely held idea of creative freedom coming from constraint. Some of the most astonishing poems I've read about prison were written by the poet Chris Abani in his collection, Kalakuta Republic, about being imprisoned in Nigeria in the 1980s. The poems of many black American writers, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks in particular, focus on the struggle for freedom, as does the work of many South African poets such as veteran of the struggle, Tatamkhulu Africa whose poems are featured on the Poetry International website along with writers from around the world. What an enormous subject. Is all poetry, perhaps, about freedom. Isn't that what delivers the urge to write?

2016 theme: Messages

I've been writing a series of poems based on letters, which I found in an old suitcase of mine. Of course I've thrown many of my old letters away, which is a shame because this has been a really interesting source of poems. In some ways they're random because of the subjects in the letters, but what binds them is my decision to keep these particular letters, or collections of letters. I also visit a charity shop on Lewes Road regularly and after a local community garden was destroyed by a property developer, I felt a need to send an imaginary message to the Sisters of Mercy, as I might have done when I was at school, a convent in Hampshire, where our messages were prayers or intercessions, to the Virgin Mary, Jesus and various saints. I am no longer a believer, but old habits die hard.

Letter
from my father

When my
father left for Brazil, in the days international calls

were rare
as telegrams and there was no email, he posted me

a letter
containing his will. It lay on my doormat, large, brown,

official,
my address an oblong in fountain pen, each word

leaning
forward like an old fence in the wind. I thought

he loved
travel, but each new flight lifted him higher than the flocks

preparing
to migrate and what happens to a heart nearing the limits

of
atmosphere? He'd flown so much I think he knew his heart

was giving
notice and might decide, anytime, in a bar or jewellers

in Rio, at
a beach hotel, or as he fought the Atlantic undertow,

to take off
like a warbler, quietly, unnoticed. He'd be stateless,

somehow, by
dying on business. Unequipped to express any of this

he sent his
will and instructions, to arrive when he was in the air,

heading
towards Brazil's amethysts with his unsteady heart.

(Published Magma Magazine, 2015)

Letter from Johnny on the Umgeni to Durban

I've
mended her old linen sheets, inherited her arthritis

and
the stopped time of her gold watch on its fragile chain.

In
my grandfather's open top Sunbeam Talbot she had the look

of
Jackie Kennedy, in her scarf and sunglasses - and was thin

as
the boys who took her hand and guided her to leatherwork

in
a Moroccan souk. In Paris, by the Seine, she's in black and white.

She
was always single and on top of her hankies in a bedside drawer,

I
found the message from Johnny. He wrote from the boat

on
a sticky afternoon in 1950. He doesn't mention the sea's glamour,

spray
on his skin, the deck which can't ever be cool enough

for
this Englishman. He doesn't mention a woman at dinner,

who
was born in Bridport. She would have imagined his mouth

shaping
the characters, his hands opening a blue envelope, the skyline,

where
there was no land. She might have opened her box

of
photos to hear the music that played when they danced, drowning

out
the rest of the truth his letter told. But did she hope by re-reading

his
words she'd turn the liner around and replace those whites-only

beaches
he was headed towards, cheap servants, with queues for meat,

unexploded
bombs? How often did she unfold the lined paper, trace loops

and
dashes his pencil made, his only intimacy on the single page, be brave?

(Published Mslexia magazine, 2014)

Letter
from Graham

I drive you
in turn to the train - one at 7,

one at 4,
come home to stand in your rooms.

I listen
for the end of a laugh, text, "Lovely

to see
you" twice over, hang up headphones

you've
forgotten, shake out your tunes.

Footsteps
in the hall belong to my neighbours.

I smell
their coffee and toast. When their dog barks

I'm mute as
a suitcase, the bath.

The kitchen
table's how I leave it - my glasses

look into a
polka dot cloth. I'm surprised

how the house doesn't drum,
only the cat

composes her scales.I'm grateful for creases in clothes,

hanging like skins to dry
off. After work, I
hesitate

with Jane,
walk home as the sun's consumed by distant estates.

Cyclists
remind me of torches flashing through rocks

on the
hillside where that tree smells of piss.

There you
are at the top, looking down

past me,
past your Dad. The silence I open the door on

is felted
wool, still as mug, plate and spoon. I creak

into the chill
of the loft, and bring down a folder of letters -

Graham has
written from Aberdeen all the love

in the universe from me and my bicycle chain.

(Published The Rialto, 2015)

To the Sisters of
Charity

This is the second best road out
of town

but where anyone starts leaving
is anyone’s guess.

Is it half way along by the
bucket and mop shop

or after Al Amin, ‘the trustworthy’,
his aubergines

in mourning? Flats are going up
next to the Co-op,

last summer tomatoes grew there.
A tiger looked out of a wall,

and each passer-by,
me included, was a fleck in its stare.

Deities in hard yellow hats are interned

in three floors of scaffolding where
hoarding

prevents the poor looking in,on their way to petition you,

Sisters, Daughters, Ladies of
Charity at St Vincents,

last place to buy castoffs. Your door
chimes on a watercolour –

fir tree, full moon and lake. You
sell me black jeans for £1,

chipped Meissen and a prayer card
to remind me

of school’s tiniest nun. I cross to
the cashpoint

dispensing £10 a time. The
tollkeeper stretches a hand –

whatever I give, this road won’t
release me.

I’ve dropped socks, broken eggs, Sisters,
do you hear my key

pray in the front door, morning and
evening,

the sirens and vixens answering? Do
you hear

the station announcements,
hijacked when the wind’s

in a certain direction? All this
lamenting. And now the boy

calling for Will, his howl staggering up the hill,

pacing every side
street, slumpingunder an elm,

where he howls
again. I lie in the dark as he leans on a doorbell.

Neighbours join
in: “Fuck-off!”He replies: “I’m nineteen”.

What stops him
falling to his knees? How can I sleep

with Will on my
mind, the boy’s one word song?

Only Will knows
where Will is. I
hope he’s awake, like all of us.

(Published Boscombe Revolution, Issue 1)

NPD theme 2015: Light

The round house in Mashau which Risenga has built
on land he bought, close to his childhood home.
It is made of local earth and stone, thatched with
local grass. This is where we stayed in Venda.

National Poetry Day on Thursday October 8 2015 concentrated on the idea of light.The first poem below was recently published in the Needlemaker's Anthology, written after my last trip to South Africa with Giya for her 18th birthday. The figures in the poem are all from Orange Farm, the settlement Risenga's mother lives in and where we stayed on our first trip in 1994, the year of the first elections. The night in South Africa is sculptural, especially in rural areas and settlements with intermittent electricity and no street lighting.

As we
drive away from Orange Farm

they walk
out of the night, following a fence,

an
invisible path, or halting at crossroads

to hold
cigarettes for sale, one by one, invisible

until
they’re close enough to touch.

The road
and night roll together in dust,

releasing
people into cities, onto empty verges,

reveal them
in twos, alone – a man

made into a
giant by the trolley he pulls,

a woman
whose child is a curve on her back.

Thin men in
tracksuits are dark as the charred

marshlands
they cross. They are you and me,

strangers
to everyone, alive only in headlamps

between
here and there.

***

The light of the southern hemisphere appears throughout Fever Tree (Arc, 2003) and particularly in the title poem which contrasts the light of north and south using the trees that typify the two landscapes. ***

LightA child looking into a crystal ballcan see a belt of yellow -the colour used on a mapto show a sandy beach.Everything’s yellow - it’s the light;the same light which fills her body when she discoversthose plastic horses and ridersat the end of her bed,light which fills the shop mirror as she tries on new shoes and jeans.She doesn’t need to know about the guilt that comes with pleasure,how a candle might be shared by a roomful of people. For now, the child staring into a crystal ballis allowed that light, smoothas a window pane, round as the glass bead she rollsbetween her thumb and finger. ***Fever treeIn a forest of fever trees there’d be no night.At full moon, it would glow like a city, illuminate every path and nest. See how the ants crumble its bark to dust,carry it underground. In a forest of fever trees, there’d be no shadows. Its light is lemon like a northern sun. It should be growing where there’s snow, alongside silver birch, for winter days, and nights which go on too long.***SilenceYou may hear dogs call to each otherbut light talks for you; the full moon’s shadows, a dark path to the looamong maize and lemon trees.Wood burns for supper, goats settle down for the night and you listen to cloudsforced towards you, heat gather for tomorrow, dust ready to rise and settle. Outside, the sky shared with mountains, you celebrate the absence of everything but the moon on a porch.***My need for light, in common with so many northern Europeans, finds expression in other ways too. The next poems are from Commandments. ***

The islands Here light expands the tunnel you’ve become.A big sky always takes you in.There’s no one but the Hebrides chattering,a stone leans towards another; a lover listening.Birds don’t care if you live or die.Here a cloud tries to be a mountaintop.Colours need water and you are water.Silent Steinways replay each odd and even year.One day an Annunciation will happen.***WaitingWhere’s my lover? Not in the windbanging on windows,or clouds, so slow to turn pink and grey.If I whistlewill he rush to me over the Downs?I long for Antarctica’s days,endless as queues for bread,squatters reclaiming wasteland.Children wait for kisses,mothers stand by gravesuntil the Resurrection.In three hours, I meet them all. Together we stare into the next minutehoping land and lightwill break our falland cushion us, soft as silt.***

There's a change in the poems within Woman's Head as Jug. In this collection, light's a way of focusing on what's hidden or unsaid. ***SATURDAY GIRLWhen the power was cut in 1974the manager lit candles. We carried fabricto the door for customers to check in daylight.I learned crepe and twill – my hands exploredthe dark for taffeta and gauze. All I earned, I spent.Browsing pattern books I learned to clothe myselfby knowing nap and seam allowance, how to cuta yoke on the bias. Start with Simplicity, progressto Vogue. I thought I was choosing well, an easy tunicin Liberty Varuna wool – clumps of red flowers on black.I unravelled the bolt, measured each yard against a brass rule.The manager handed me scissors. I was afraid to cut.She snipped the selvedge for me, guided the blade,wrapped in paper the dress I never finished and still crave.FOREST CHOIRShe’s in that old light again,inventing sleep without sirens,the first blackbird cutting through the blinds.CANOPYWhen boots left the pathin that forest,the canopy hushed.Each tree held back light,mote by mote.Ants stripped the bones.The city creepsup mountainsidestowards distant, painted shrines.Thorns whiffle with ribbon,a newborn’s sock,a doll’s lace bra.SANDWICH MAN ADVERTISING PIZZAFree garlic bread.Meat Machine and Sizzler,my DAY OF JUDGEMENT specials.I stand between two pizzas at the lights,mascot of binmen filling the void.*********NPD theme 2014: RememberPoems below from various collections on this theme. Whitehawk

The
boy’s found curled like a foetus

by
the golf club, disturbed by a JCB,

his
skull smashed, alone, facing north.

Sixteen
maybe, his feet to the sea.

He’d
have run down that hillside so fast

sun
on the waves bounced him to us,

out
of the camp’s ditches, causeways,

axes
and bones, to the foxholes and rat runs

of
Whitehawk where friends he outpaced

one
spring afternoon are still calling

five
thousand years on. Re-united, they climb

to
the grandstand. They move through racks

of
fake Adidas, gold bracelets, the shove

and
fried onions of a bank holiday market

the
way flint or a necklace, the rim of a pot,will
find a path up through the earth.

Rigging

If we'd taped that rainy night in the car

when we sat drinking with the windows down,

staring at the lights of two cottages

on the island opposite, it would play back

nothing but breathing, the door opening

and closing as you checked the children

in the tent, a cork pulled from a bottle,

the Atlantic below, reclaiming another inch

of the peninsula, wind rustling a plastic

rubbish bag, damp matches scraped uselessly

on the dashboard and you tapping a rhythm

on your glass with a pencil - like rigging

against masts, beached above the tideline,bared of sails and wet with spray.

The coastguard's cottage

(after
Montale)

You are watching the couple

with nothing to say to their child. I ask

if you remember being here

two months after our son was born.

Above us the coastguard's cottage moves:

plaster cracks, a skirting board gapes.

On the walls are experiments

with colour, squares of indigo, terracotta.

I could live there. You warn each storm

weakens the cliff a little more.

And my question's forgotten.

Perhaps I was alone feeding

him in the shade of an umbrella.

Have I replayed it wrong or too often?

Eavesdropping

I hear the wrench my brother smashes

on the garage floor as he tries

to put a Norton engine back together,

the Bells whisky my father slops into a
tumbler,

followed by ice, a tap turned on,

my other brother imitating machine gun fire

in the loft where he plays war games.

I hear my mother typing in the new room

making the dining table shudder

as she punches each key, our dog,

Steve, barking at the kitchen door,

Penny, my cat miaow for supper -

and myself on the phone again, straining

for background
noise, anything familiar.

After Edna St Vincent Millay

(What
lips my lips have kissed and where, and why)

The first was a German boy in South Street,
Farnham

a disco at the British Legion, August '68,
summer of love.

The most desired was Michel's, in a barn. I
slept it off

after a night drinking Calvados as old as me.
I was 21.

These forgotten names and faces visit me at
random,

emerge from a retro hairstyle, album, coat or
move

of the mouth. Nick's reaching for the rack
above

my head on the 7.17. In Victoria, I spot
Graham

on his way home to Aberdeen. They're my age
now.

Does that guy in Brixton think of me in my
blue hat?

I congregate with old lovers in a kind of
limbo,

resurrected by address books, a taste of
Kumquat.

My lips, unsmudged, pink from habit, remember
how

I moved, read
aloud with a stranger, the Story of O.

Tired of forgetting my thoughts

I decide to carry a net

above my head.

At the end of each day

I go over my catch.

Today - new shoes

the lorry which cut me up

on the M25, a list:

loo rolls, vegetables

bias binding, Ecover

washing powder.

There are thoughts

I’d like to show off.

My keen knowledge

of Greek myths.

But I worry about

the grey men who flop

one after another

over my forehead

refusing to move

or tell me their names.

They’re only interested

in crossword puzzles.

What can I do with them,

and the new thoughts

I never get to know -

abducted as
they play?

Doing inquests

They arrive at my house, these dead people

demanding to know where my notebooks are.

“Where are the records of our deaths?”they ask.

“Try the police, the coroner’s officer,”I suggest.

“But it was you who knocked on our wife’s,

husband’s, parents’ doors at midday

asking why the man with his head in a noose,

the woman lying in vomit happened to be wearing

each other’s underwear. You demanded the story.

Where’s it gone, then?”they ask.

“I kept it in myloft forseven years then threw

it away. But I haven’t
forgotten you,” I say.

NPD 2013 theme: Water

Herring girl

And as the fish rise to the surface
the water fires with Gaelic songs.

The shoal is eight miles long
and four miles wide. A fleet of drifters

pulls in sheets and sheets of silver
five thousand of us, knife sharp,

on the quayside. I sing
to stand the pain of salt, of men

and herring that escape the nets
carry my songs to sea again,

cast them back as blackthorn flowers
in the spring.

Woman’s head as jug(after a title by Jane Fordham)

Today she pours the Water of Life – green
walnuts picked in June, beaten with a pestle.

that turned silver and still. A boat slowed
its engine. Everything was changed.

The Ropemakers

After stooping through a tunnel washed smooth by floods
our guide switches off the lights and we stand
still as stalagmites trying to guess where he is
from the strength of his sweet, beery breath telling us,
as if he's engineered it himself, there'll never be a crack
of sun or moon in here - where each winter three rivers
once collided and tons of water were forced upwards,
pummelling a ceiling more intricate than any stately home's.
Above, near the entrance, the ropemakers
lived - twisting and plaiting - and after rain or thaws,
had no need of ears, just mouthed and lipread
above the roar, their faces yellow in the candle flames,
paled by daylight only a few hours a week.

The old Anglia can't take it and my parents' plans for driving
through the night give out with the engine in a sheet of rain.
By fluke my father finds a garage, a removals van
filling up, so we're lifted, floppy with tiredness,
into the back to lie on blankets in the dark. No signposts,
no blinding headlights for my father to swear at
when they won't dip, no orange glare at each new town -
just that rattle of a toolbox and roll down door.
They could be taking us anywhere.
My mother promises tomorrow she'll pick us cherries.
My brothers whisper themselves to sleep, but I know
why the ropemakers avoided that hole in the back
of their cave, so opaque, immune to wax and matches -
it could draw you in by accident,
commanding silence while skin slowly covered your eyes.

from Powder Tower, Arc, 1995

The birds sing about water

The birds carry a river,
their chorus in my throat,
in the dry spring I walk to,
useless tap, slashed water tank.
I stand in a metal tub with a flannel
waiting for them to fill it drop by drop.

The birds carry a river,
lifted from its source, pulled over
our valley to water mangoes, lychees, tea.
It runs over stones in their beaks.
They shake waterfalls from their wings
drumming pools deeper than feet can reach.

The birds carry a river,
sing until Mashau’s roads are rapids.
Fistfuls of pebbles slam on the zozo’s
tin roof. Children lay down bottles,
paint buckets, cans. The malachite
kingfisher shows us how to dive.

The birds carry a river
to a priest growling his prayers,
past mercenaries at the plantation gates.
If they could hide it, lay pipes for it
they would, but the birds carry a river
litre by heavy litre on their heads.